When you are well known and have some cash in the bank, you’re probably going to get sued at least once in your life. When you are Facebook and you have 250+ million users, increase the amount of lawsuits by a factor of 10 or so. Yes, Facebook has been sued once again, this time for allegedly misleading members on the use of their personal information and for violating California privacy laws.

The Orange County lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Facebook users, according to the AP – a photographer, an actress, two children under 13 (despite needing to be 13 or older to legally use Facebook) and a “user of the original Facebook.” It seeks monetary damages, attorney’s fees, and a trial by jury.

As you’d expect, Facebook believes that there is “no merit to this suit” and intends to fight it. We could go on and on about past Facebook lawsuits, many of them similar to this one. There was the lawsuit seeking $70.50 in damages, the text messaging lawsuit, the iKimbo patent, a class-action lawsuit for Facebook Beacon, the famous ConnectU debacle, and most recently, Power.com suing Facebook over data ownership. We’re pretty sure this list is nowhere near comprehensive.

Look: Facebook faces these types of suits all the time, and most of the time they are either dismissed or settled. Yes, Facebook’s had some thorny affairs with privacy, but recently they’ve been moving in the right direction with Facebook Democracy. Allowing users to vote on their own Terms of Service and letting them vote on changes is more than most sites offer. Besides, this lawsuit complains about common practices being illegal, such as changing the Terms of Service. It essentially rails against Facebook for 40 pages on practically every one of its featurse.

From the parts that we’ve read, we suspect that this California lawsuit doesn’t worry Facebook very much at all.

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1. Facebook Exposes Top British Spy
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There are red faces in the UK today after it emerged that private details about the incoming head of MI6 were posted to Facebook by his wife. The details included information about John Sawers’ family, residence, vacations…and a photo of Sawers in a Speedo.

Specific details revealed, according to the BBC, included the location of the London flat where Sawers lives with his wife, plus the location of their children and John’s parents. The page’s privacy settings were not turned on, meaning that anyone in Facebook’s London network had access. Vacation photos, friendships and other details were also available on Shelley Sawers’ Facebook page, which has since been removed. The story originally broke in the Mail on Sunday. Sawers is currently the UK Ambassador to the United Nations and is due to take up his role as the head of MI6 in November.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband played down the issue today, saying on a morning talk show: “You know he wears Speedo…I mean, that’s not a state secret”.

Incidentally, the error comes just as Facebook attempts a transition from a private social network to being a more public, Twitter-like broadcast channel.

See also: FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster

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1. Facebook’s “fbFund 2009″ Names First Batch Of Winners
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Facebook has just named 25 of the finalists for the latest round of fbFund, the social network’s joint program with Accel and Founders Fund meant to help foster quality applications on Facebook Platform. Today’s announcement represents only half of the finalists for this round, and the company says that the other 25 winners will be annouced soon. These 50 finalists will each be given $1,000 in Facebook advertising, but much more important, they will have a shot at taking part in Facebook’s incubator program this summer.

fbFund has evolved since its inception in 2007, shifting from a no-strings-attached grant to an incubator model led by Silicon Valley vet Dave McClure. Of the 50 finalists from this round, a select number of winners will be invited to the incubator program, where they can receive as much as $100,000 in equity investment along with training alongside Facebook executives and mentors. The program’s latest round has also shifted focus from solely applications built on Facebook Platform to include those using Facebook Connect both on the web and the iPhone.

Here’s a list of the winners:

Connect sites:
Frintro
GovIt
RunMyErrand
RentMineOnline
MyChurch.org
GreetBeatz
Workstir
NutshellMail
RunThere
DropPlay
Magellan (private beta),
Life360 (private beta)
Vittanna (private beta)

Platform apps:
Travel Brain
Networked Blogs
Gameyola
Photos I Like
Paradise Paintball 3D
Veechi Classes
BitStrips (private beta)
SamaSource

iPhone apps:
FriendFreak
Near+Now (Sortuv)
Paparazzi
CrazyMenu

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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2. Facebook for Windows Mobile official

Windows Mobile users have long had to live without an official Facebook app. On Thursday, that all changes with the launch of Facebook for Windows Mobile 6. A test version of the app leaked in March, and now it goes on general release.

Although they’ve had to wait substantially longer than those with other handsets, Windows Mobile users do get one special feature: you can upload video straight to Facebook from the app, which Microsoft heralds as a first. Standard features listed by Microsoft include:

1. Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list.

2. Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook.

3. Send messages or call people in your Friends list.

4. Manage your profile and post anytime, anywhere.

Our lone Windows Mobile user at Mashable describes it as “a cross between the BlackBerry and the iPhone app”, but far less impressive than either – it’s harder to navigate, with small buttons and more clicks required. It’s nice, however, to have phone book integration on a Windows Mobile device: this provides easy access to all Facebook friends who listed a phone number on their Facebook profiles.

Having tested unofficial Facebook apps for Windows Mobile (see FriendMobilizer, for example), it’s fair to say there is little choice here: if you’re using Windows Mobile and want a Facebook app, here’s your solution.

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Plenty of celebrities have embraced social media over the past year, but perhaps none moreso than Jimmy Fallon, who has made tools like Twitter and Facebook an integral part of his late night television show. Fallon’s efforts have been acknowledged by The Webby Awards, who have bestowed their “Person of the Year” award upon the comedian.

Fallon, who recently took over Conan O’Brien’s 12:30am time slot on NBC, has a big presence across a multitude of social sites, including Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. He also makes use of these tools during his show – for example, using Twitter to determine questions to ask his guests, and assigning fictional Facebook status updates to members of his studio audience during one of his skits. Recently, Fallon even had Diggnation co-hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on the program (video below).

Some other notable individuals winning awards included Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who has been outspoken about technology issues and made one of his band’s albums available for free on the Web, and Seth MacFarlane, who won an award in Video and Film for his Web-exclusive release of “Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.”

Ultimately, all three of these individuals did make significant contributions to the Web in 2008, so, we’re not surprised to see them taking home the hardware from the Webby’s, which is now in its 13th year. The prohibitive favorite for next year’s awards? That would have to be Ashton Kutcher.

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If Google had managed to acquire Facebook back when Yahoo failed to do so, Google would truly dominate the online referral business. But it appears that Google and Yahoo really missed the boat on the social end of the spectrum.

As MySpace crumbles, the decision of Google executives not to purchase the social network incredibly cheap in 2005 is looking better than it once did—though that $900 million search deal didn’t work out so well, either; Google spent three times as much money to deliver ads to MySpace than it would have cost to buy it earlier.

But Facebook is a different animal. Yahoo saw its potential early, offering a cool billion to a young CEO reluctant to sell (or attend early morning negotiations for that matter, according to some reports). It’s hard to know what price would have pushed Mark Zuckerberg over the mattress edge, but two years or so ago it would have been exponentially cheaper than now, with 200 million users to leverage.

But it’s not so much audience size that makes Facebook valuable (though that’s a huge part of it), and it’s certainly not the ease of monetization. It’s the social network’s innate ability to refer traffic, which is essentially at the heart of Google’s own power.

Perhaps few paid much attention when metrics firms reported Facebook drove more traffic to Perez Hilton’s celebrity website than Google, but what about a site like the Huffington Post? Ryan Spoon, web entrepreneur and former eBayer, reports Facebook directs 18.6 percent of HuffPo’s 13 million visitors. Google refers just 11.6 percent.

ryanspoon.com

Aside from one, the other top referrers are either search or social: Yahoo (5.16%), Digg (4.43%), and NyTimes.com (2.5%). Collectively, social sites drive almost a quarter of HuffPo’s traffic, compared to 16 percent for search engines. Obviously, search and social together approach half. If Google had ponied up early to get Facebook, Google would be sending close to a third of that traffic over, as Spoon points out, part algorithmically and part socially.

Perhaps it was the constant threat of antitrust action that kept Google at bay, perhaps it was simply a missed opportunity. Regardless, it gives webmasters a lot to think about, specifically, now that SEO is rather standard, how to leverage Facebook’s power as a traffic generator.

Spoon notes HuffPo creates viral content that encourages Facebookers to share. Creating something people want to share is an art in itself, and certainly HuffPo benefits from its newsy, political nature. But how could a different kind of business target this group that spans several demographics?

Obviously, the information Facebook has on its users is a goldmine the social network isn’t expressly permitted to mine for privacy reasons, though they can feasibly offer general demographic information. But we’re not talking advertising so much as we are content people appreciate enough to spread around.

There’s no one answer to this, but just as a general direction, people like quirky trivia. A blog post, or better maybe, a well-wrought press release to a news organization or popular blogger, could be just the ticket.

Say, for example, a shoe seller issues ten interesting facts about the history of shoes. Even better: Conduct a small experiment with a sample of people who agree to have their movements tracked and publish walking maps of where those shoes go, how many miles are walked, etc. That may be just the kind of thing people find interesting.

For marketers, the possibilities for social marketing are nearly limitless. For Google and what are now traditional search engines, the possibilities may be surprisingly full of limits.

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Facebook has started rolling out real real-time updates today. If you are not seeing them yet, don’t freak out. You’ll get them soon enough.

"We’ve always focused the stream on real-time updates, but before today you needed to refresh your browser to see the most recent posts since logging in," explains Adam Hupp at the Facebook Blog. "The stream now updates automatically and gives you the option to view new posts with a prompt at the top of the page immediately below the Publisher."

You can click on the link that says "Show X new Posts," and the posts will be expanded into your stream.

Hupp says user feedback played a big role in the change, and that this feature has been one of the most commonly requested ones. People will no doubt still complain about the redesign, but don’t count on that going away anytime soon.

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Even when consumers aren’t showering them with cash, retailers need to stay in touch, according to a new report.  And Rockbridge Associates and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business recommend that they do so by maintaining presences on social networking sites.

In a paper titled "Changing Consumer Priorities in Tough Times," these two organizations argued, "Continuing the relationship with customers is a key strategy for service providers as they provide opportunities for the businesses to recoup revenues through up-selling at a later point in time."

 

Social networks seem to provide the ideal way of maintaining contact, too, as the paper also stated, "Compared to a year ago, more [U.S. adults] are interacting with friends and family online through social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn.  Specifically, 33 percent are doing this more, 14 percent are doing this less, and 53 percent are doing this the same; the only activity that is increasing at a faster pace is television watching."

So companies that don’t feel like spending lots of money on TV commercials should consider that it’s possible to reach similar audiences online for free.

Then, when people are ready to start spending again (99 percent of the study’s participants agreed that the economy’s in either a recession or a depression at the moment), these savvy companies will already be a part of their daily lives.

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